Compelling documentary. In three parts, perhaps because of YouTube limitations.

I have actually noticed that kids who are not at all happy to eat vegetable will often happily eat a baked dish loaded with vegetables. Kids who will spit out the ‘pallak’ that comes with the ‘paneer’ will often relish a spinach and corn baked. Well, at least mine do (small sample size, I know). To test the theory I once toyed with the idea of starting a fast-food restaurant for kids that served only ‘junk food’. Well, that is what it would be ‘marketed’ as to the kids, but actually the food would be healthy and balanced. I even thought up part of the menu, branding, packaging… Unfortunately you cannot always cook everything you can think up, and the idea stayed untested…

That is one reason why I was really excited to see this campaign that packages carrots as junk food and sells it in vending machines in schools in the US. I wish them well and hope that they succeeded…

According to study presented to the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) “students benefit both physically and academically from time devoted during the school day to physical activity”. Read this story…

Need more evidence? See this video by Stuart Brown at TED.  His research shows that “play is not just joyful and energizing — it’s deeply involved with human development and intelligence”.

Recommendation: Let them play! Influence schools and public policy (private colonizers?) to recognize this and create facilities for play in schools and in localities.

And what do you say to parents who take their 10-year-olds, 3-year-olds and even 9-month-olds to adult cinema? Not so long ago I left a late-night movie half-way because I found it disturbing/horrific… perhaps a little scary. But mothers with babies stuck to their bosoms stayed on…

Nobody seems to care that our daily newspapers are full of adult content. And kids’ programming on TV is interspersed with promos of late-night movies with loads of sex and violence.

I don’t have a problem with adult content per se, as long as media takes reasonable measures to keep it away from kids. The media is being completely irresponsible, but the day the government puts in a legislation mandating that they seek censor certificates for all their content, they will be the first ones to complain about government high-handedness.

TV has proven its worth as a baby-sitter, across cultures! Social networking has effectively come to represent what we do using a browser and not what we do in our living rooms or parks and sports fields… This is a logical next step. Right?

The only loud objection one can hear is coming from the Author’s Guild of America. They don’t have a problem with the product… actually they suspect it may be very good. What they want is that the authors be sufficiently compensated for the audio rights being bundled into the Kindle 2.

Read the op-ed at the New York Times: The Kindle Swindle?
IHT says “The Kindle: Good before, better now”
Read about the open standards debate at wired

“Exposure to more television and other electronic media during the teenage years appears to be associated with developing depression symptoms in young adulthood, especially among men, according to a report in the February issue of Archives of General Psychiatry…”

Turns out that 80 percent of the research efforts show a ‘link between a negative health outcome and media hours or content’. The study says there is ‘…above average evidence to support the link between media exposure and drug use, alcohol use and low academic achievement.’ This research focused on television, music, movies…

We can wait for more such research to conclusively show that the same is true for web, social-networking sites, cell phones, and video games. Or we as parents can sit up and take notice…

Read the article at Washington Post

France’s broadcast authority has banned French channels from airing TV shows aimed at children under 3 years old, to shield them from developmental risks it says television viewing poses at that age.

The High Audiovisual Council, in a ruling published Wednesday, said it wanted to “protect children under 3 from the effects of television.”

France’s minister for culture and communication, Christine Albanel, issued a “cry of alarm” to parents in June about channels dedicated 24 hours a day to baby-targeted programming. In a newspaper interview, she called them “a danger” and urged parents not to use them to help their children get to sleep.

I was glad to read in a recent Guardian article that MyCBBC, a social networking site for kids launched just four months ago by BBC has already reached 100,000 registered users. I wish them success and hope that they set the benchmark…

And BTW, if you have kids please point them towards MyCBBC, gently!

Read the Guardian article

The Telegraph of UK explains what BPA is:

BPA is a synthetic version of oestrogen, the female sex hormone, and experts have suggested for more than a decade that chemicals in the environment and in consumer products may be contributing to male and female diseases, such as prostate and breast cancer.

The San Francisco Chronicle reports

Independent tests done for The Chronicle and reported in November found bisphenol A, a chemical that mimics estrogen, in a baby bottle and several toys. Bisphenol A is also found in the lining of food cans, some anti-cavity sealants for teeth, and electronics.

Then, in late February, Environment California, an advocacy group, released a report titled “Toxic Baby Bottles” that drew intense national media coverage.

When heated, five of the most popular brands of polycarbonate — the clear, shatterproof plastic used in baby bottles — leached bisphenol A at levels that have been found to cause harm in laboratory animals, Environment California found.

To be fair, the research is not conclusive and there is opposition to this view. The question to ask is ‘should we keep using plastic bottles to feed our babies, while we wait for the researchers to prove conclusively that it can cause cancer?’ What is the cost of shifting to glass baby bottles?